What do we take for granted?
I saw a man signing to his phone over a video call happily and suddenly, I was overwhelmed by a great sense of gratitude for what we all enjoyed for centuries that those who are deaf and mute could not – the telephone.
I took for granted that people of all ages, background and identity could pick up a phone and speak to someone else miles away. That we could enjoy a familiar voice in the comfort of where we are, or feel a sense of someone listening to us as we speak into a phone while alone. This is why the Good Samaritans hotline works, or that companies hire armies of customer service officers to handle customers in a call center.
Yet not everyone had that. It was only in recent years that video calls became widely accessible and broadly used. Without the smart phone, video was virtually impossible or just plain crappy on a mobile phone. Without mobile data, video calls would be prohibitively expensive.
So maybe, when we are really lost and sad, for whatever reason, we want to ask ourselves: what are we taking for granted?